[colpabar]

Agreed. I think we need to put as much blame on the carriers providing these capabilities to anyone, let alone the police. That the police are publicly funded and are buying this data with my money is also a huge issue to me, but if I had to pick one thing to change, I’d make selling this data illegal. That way, no one could have it.

[randombits0]

That’s what the warrant requirement is all about, that’s where it’s broken. This technique should only be used for major felonies.

On the flip side, if you want to commit major felonies, don’t take your phone!

[JumpCrisscross]

> technique should only be used for major felonies

Doesn’t the crime they were pursuing, dealing heroin in connection with an overdose, rise to that level? (No comment on the merits of the law. Just the facts of the investigation.)

[matthewdgreen]

The article says the police didn't describe the man as a suspect in the warrant application. By this logic, the police could investigate any acquaintance of someone even peripherally involved in a crime (which is a huge chunk of the population.)

[cryptonector]

> if you want to commit major felonies

That's not how it works. Sometimes the police suspect people who are innocent, and they work hard to get them on technicalities if need be, and meanwhile, the risk of inadvertently and unintentionally committing obscure crimes is substantially higher than zero, so...

[morsch]

Or rather, please do.

[cosmodisk]

This one has been the case for years. Even when the technical capabilities were only at theoretical level, any criminal with some brain used to switch off their phones+ take out batteries before even having any discussions, not to mention commiting crimes. Today's phones can't be used anywhere in any context if people are involved in some criminal activities.

[sixothree]

I assume they target these people because they can seize assets. And drug dealers often deal in cash. Why else would they be so absolutely inept solving or prventing most crimes (looking at just about any metric available), yet still be laser focused on these certain crimes.

[kingcharles]

Asset forfeitures can be beneficial to police departments, but not usually of much concern to individual police officers, except in ad hoc situations where they can easily pocket cash they take during a search (happens very frequently from my experience).

And to add to that, a lot of jurisdictions have cracked down massively on forfeitures (technical term: civil in rem forfeiture) because of how badly abused the system has been in the past by prosecutors and police departments.

[syspec]

In some places the arresting cop is legally given a percentage of the money

[cryptonector]

The carriers probably don't have a choice.